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Biotech Companies
Up GMO Campaign in Africa

by John Mbaira

The East African

May 31, 2008

Unwitting African
countries are being coaxed and coerced to cultivate and consume genetically
modified crops in a campaign bankrolled by giant biotech multinationals and
executed by cash-rich “scientific” organisations who extol technology as the
panacea for the continent’s hunger and low agricultural productivity.

The big-bucks
campaign has been picking up steam in East Africa in recent months with one
announcement after another being made through compliant media outlets of
grandiose initiatives aimed at helping the region’s countries to fight hunger.

The media reports
on these initiatives rarely query the role of the global biotech giants nor do
they examine the broader agenda behind the big pro-GMO push in African
countries. Almost all the reports on the GMO initiatives either explicitly
endorse them or end up reproducing without comment the glowingly positive
picture painted by the GMO proponents.

As a result, the
possible social, economic and health consequence of cultivating and consuming GM
“Frankenfoods” are rarely covered. Observers say the uncritical attitude of the
media means that it has unwittingly been incorporated into the campaign and has
failed to inform millions of African smallholder farmers and their families
about the entire truth on GMOs.

The safety aspects
aside, this is likely to prove a fatal oversight in a region that has in the
past few decades invested heavily in production for export of coffee,
vegetables, flowers and other agricultural produce to Western markets — a
growing proportion of it comprising organic or specialty items tailored to niche
markets obsessed with purity and traceability of ingredients.

The European market
in particular is increasingly hostile to genetically modified crops. In April
2007, according to the GMO-Free Europe website, at least 174 regions, over 4,500
municipalities and other local entities and tens of thousands of farmers and
food producers in Europe have declared themselves “GMO-free,” expressing their
commitment not to allow the use of genetically modified organisms in agriculture
and food in their territories.

On May 7 this year,
the European Commission sent three controversial genetically modified crops back
to its food safety agency in what activists described as “a huge vote of
no-confidence in the EU’s approval system.”

The European Food
Safety Authority was asked to review its previous opinion on the safety of a
genetically modified potato in light of concerns raised by the World Health
Organisation, the Institut Pasteur and the European Medicines Agency. The GM
potato, produced by German chemicals company BASF, contains a gene which confers
resistance to certain antibiotics considered “relevant” for human and animal
health.

The food safety
body was also asked to review its previous assessment of two GM maize varieties
developed by the companies Syngenta and Pioneer/Dow, that are engineered to
produce their own pesticide and which it had originally stated were safe. There
is said to be growing scientific evidence showing that the insecticide could
affect wildlife and may have knock-on effects on Europe’s biodiversity.

Last week, the
Chicago Tribune reported that the United States government is using the
prevailing global food crisis to promote the use of genetically modified crops
particularly in Africa. Recently, the paper said, US had proposed a $770 million
package to ease the global crisis. However, Bush had subsequently directed the
USAid to spend $150 million of the money “on development farming, which would
include the use of GMO crops.” The paper also reported that the Bush
administration has been trying to “persuade European nations to lift their
objection to the use of GMO crops in Africa.”

In April, the paper
reported, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had suggested at a Peace Corps
conference that, “We need to look again at some of the issues concerning
technology and food production. I know that GMOs are not popular around the
world, but there are places that drought-resistant crops should be a part of the
answer.”

The US had earlier
tried to introduce GMO crops to Africa in 2002, with an offer of aid that
included corn, some of which was genetically modified. Despite a severe drought,
Zambia, under European Union pressurer rejected the aid altogether. Several
other countries accepted the US corn, but only after it was milled. The Bush
administration is reportedly working to persuade European nations to lift their
objection to the use of GMO crops in Africa.

Not to be left
behind, in its 2008 World Development Report, the World Bank urges rich
countries to “sharply” raise financial support to countries willing to embrace
genetic engineering in food production.

Perhaps taking its
cue from the World Bank, Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID)
recently set up a $13 million fund to finance research on genetic engineering to
control pests that ravage a number of staple crops in Kenya and Tanzania —
bananas, rice, maize, sweet potatoes and coconuts.

Indeed, biotech
multinationals appear to be designing GM-varieties specifically for particular
African countries. For instance, on May 3, 2006, the head of Monsanto’s Kenyan
subsidiary, Kinyua M’Mbijiwe, revealed that the US-based giant had developed a
GM-maize variety for the Kenyan market.

Meanwhile, the
latest major initiative was covered in this very paper. In The EastAfrican last
week, it was announced that the Africa Bio-fortified Sorghum Project — a
consortium of nine scientific bodies — is to launch a scheme to use genetic
engineering in loading sorghum with additional nutritional contents. The $21
million initiative intends to “fortify” sorghum with vitamins A and E as well as
iron and zinc, thus converting it into a more nutritious, easily digestible and
attractive foodstuff.

It was claimed that
when fully introduced, the GM-sorghum would solve a range of nutritional
problems in sub-Saharan Africa, where “millions of people… suffer from health
problems associated with vitamin and mineral deficiency.” And like similar
reports on the potential benefits of GMOs for Africa, the report graphically
replayed the plight of the poor in the continent. Arid climates and poor soils,
the story stated, mean that 80 per cent of the children in the region “receive
inadequate amounts of vitamin A (while) half the entire population suffers from
iron deficiency and a third from zinc deficiency.”

Typically, once the
news reports paint the African scenario in such heartrending terms, they proceed
to predict almost magical scenarios in which the yet-to-be-tested GMOs eradicate
such difficulties once and for all. In many cases, such self-declared GMO
proponents as the head of Africa Harvest, Dr Florence Wambugu, are invited to
make supporting arguments.

“Malnutrition
remains a leading direct and indirect cause of the rise in many non-communicable
diseases in Africa,” Dr Wambugu told The EastAfrican last week, adding that lack
of micronutrients brings about impaired immune systems, blindness, low birth
weight and so on.

In most cases, such
stories conclude at that point. Rarely is any effort made to answer such
questions as who is behind the funding of the GM research or who will end up
getting the patents for such improved crop varieties. “There is a lot of
manipulation going on and Unwitting African countries are being coaxed and
coerced to cultivate and consume genetically modified crops in a campaign
bankrolled by giant biotech multinationals and executed by cash-rich
“scientific” organisations who extol technology as the panacea for the
continent’s hunger and low agricultural productivity.

Mr Ngonyo said East
Africans are not only provided little or no information about the health
consequences of consuming GM-crop varieties but are also left in the dark about
the implications of cultivating them in the poor and/or fragile soils prevailing
in the region.

“The way the GMO
story is told is like a fairy goddess has come to us, eager to give Africa all
it ever needed,” he added.

Local oversight
institutions mandated to police the proliferation of plant materials also appear
oddly complacent. In a report carried in our sister paper, The Sunday Nation, in
late March, this writer cited evidence that Kenyans have unwittingly been
growing and consuming genetically modified maize.

The variety in
question — PHB30V53 — is a hybrid that has its origins in the US and is patented
by Dupont, one of the world’s leading biotech companies. It is imported into
Kenya from South Africa ,where it is multiplied and packaged for the African
market.

A determined effort
by a group of 45 farmer organisations and non-governmental organisations
operating under the auspices of the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC) led to
the finding that PHB30V53 is contaminated with traces of the genetically
modified organism Mon810, which is patented by Monsanto. KBioC had sought the
help of Greenpeace scientists who took 42 samples of maize seeds from agrovet
shops in Kibwezi, Machakos, Thika, Nakuru, Eldoret and Kitale towns. The samples
were of maize seed varieties owned and marketed by local and international seed
companies.

After sampling, the
scientists ground the seeds into flour and after preliminary testing, 19 of the
samples were found to be suspect and shipped to the laboratories of the
Germany-based Eurofins GeneScan GmbH for further tests.

“Eurofins isolated
PHB30V53, a variety that is owned and patented by Pioneer, a South African
company,” Dr Daniel Maingi, a scientist with KBioC, told this writer.

The sampling and
testing took place late last year. Several South African and European
publications covered the saga, with South Africa’s Business Day quoting the
director of the African Centre for Biosafety, Mariam Mayet, on March 20 as
saying, “The maize seeds are contaminated with a genetically engineered variety,
Mon810, belonging to Monsanto, that has not been approved in Kenya.”

She added that
maize laced with Mon810 contains a novel gene that is considered unsafe and is
banned in several European countries. When the matter became public in Kenya,
the Kenya government temporarily banned the marketing of the variety, only to
lift the ban following an announcement by the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate
Service (Kephis) that its own analysis had established that the GMO traces in
PHB30V53 were insignificant.

The organisation’s
director, Chagema Kedera, criticised KBioC for going public over the matter
before getting the signed certificate from Eurofins. This writer then managed —
through the assistance of GreenPeace officials — to secure a signed certificate
from Eurofins. It also emerged that the Kephis tests of the maize variety could
only have been “preliminary” since the organisation does not have the necessary
equipment to do a proper GMO test.

Later, Jan van Aken,
of Greepeace’s Sustainable Agriculture Campaign, told The EastAfrican that
though Eurofins had detected a mere 0.1 per cent contamination, this did not
mean that the contaminated PHB30V53 variety is safe to grow and consume or that
it has no negative effects on the environment.

“Even at 0.1 per
cent, it could be disastrous in the long run,” he said, further arguing that
even if it is assumed the Pioneer maize variety were planted on a mere 1,000
hectares in the country, this would mean a total of 80 million plants — in other
words, 0.1 per cent of the 80 million plants amounts to 80,000 genetically
modified plants “growing, pollinating and seeding” in Kenya this year alone.

In mid June last
year, officials from the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition sampled 10 food items sold
in some of Nairobi’s key supermarkets. They then sought assistance from
Greenpeace International in screening the items for GMOs. KBioC released the
results at a press conference on October 15, 2007, in which they announced that
genetically modified foods had actually infiltrated the Kenyan market without
being labelled as such.

The findings flew
in the face of government officials repeated denials that GM foods are on sale
in the country.

With the billions
of dollars they generate each year, the giant biotech multinatinals have a great
deal of clout when it comes to pushing for their interests with governments in
industrialised countries, let alone Africa. In Death of Bees: GMO Crops and the
Decline of Bee Colonies in North America, Brit Amos says that the power wielded
by biotech conglomerates is enough to “manipulate government agricultural policy
with a view to supporting their agenda of dominance in the agricultural
industry.”

He alleges that
such American conglomerates as Monsanto, Pioneer HiBred and others, have created
“seeds that reproduce only under certain conditions, often linked to the use of
their own brands of fertiliser and/or insecticide.”

This power may now
be translating into decisive influence not only over East African agricultural
policies but also law-making processes in Kenya and other countries.

Observers cite the
saga surrounding the yet-to-be enacted Biosafety Bill in Kenya that played out
publicly over much of last year.

Although there was
ample evidence that the Bill was weak in many respects, top politicians and a
number of officials in Kenya’s Agriculture Ministry gave the nod to the Bill.